Author Description

Excerpt from Judah Hallevi's Kitab Al Khazari The invitation extended to me by the Publishers to prepare an English version of the Book Al Khazari has afforded me an opportunity of carrying out an intention which I had long cherished. It is now twenty years ago that my German translation of the work was published, and it is but natural that during this long interval I was able to detect a number of passages which required correction or, at least, general revision. The character of the book justifies the translation in the interest of those who are unable to read it in the original, or in the Hebrew version. It was meant by the author to be a book for the people, and contains sufficient attractive and instructive material to interest even those readers who would skip the more abstruse passages. Its popularity is evidenced by the fact that edition after edition followed almost from the earliest days of the printing-press down to our own time. Indeed, the most elaborate edition was undertaken by a non-Jewish scholar. The present translation was made directly from the Arabic original, as was also the case with the German translation mentioned before. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.